(((Summary: Contrary to popular opinion, they really weren't anything alike at all.

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.

Warnings: spoilers, angst

Notes: The narrator of this story is not someone you're familiar with, because she is actually a character from an unfinished story where Death Note probably will not make an appearance at all. But I just had to write this.

P.S. When it says that she "loves" Lawliet, it's a platonic—although intimate—kind of love.)))

To Lack

By: Tjix

Near wasn't like Lawliet.

Not really. It may have seemed like it on the surface, but it wasn't true. Near was… harder. Bitter. Vindictive and cold in a way that Lawliet never was. I didn't know what to do with him. I really didn't. I loved him—so to speak—but I didn't know why. There was nothing about him that I could latch onto as giving him worth. The innocent we love for their innocence, the broken for their pain…

And then there's Near.

Why did I love him? Because I had to. Because no one else would. No one else could—not the way I could. But it drained me to love him, drained me like nothing else ever had, because I was pouring myself into him and not getting anything back. Anger, even hatred… it hurt, but it was something I could confront, if unsuccessfully. But this sheer apathy, this nothingness

Lawliet wasn't like Near.

Lawliet poured himself back into me. Granted, not affection—I don't think he was capable of that—but fear, grief, pain. He loved me, in his way. And I loved him, so much that it sometimes hurt me physically. I didn't love him because of his good qualities—God knows there were scant few of those. I loved him for his pain and his sadness, for his anguish, for his sheer and utter humanity. I loved him because he needed me.

Near wasn't like Lawliet.

He was a child, and already so world-weary, so jaded. So empty. So… lifeless. Like a wraith, the walking dead. A soul that had wasted away from disuse. Insipid. Nonexistent.

Ironic. Lawliet was more alive in death than Near was in life. After all, even now—so long after the fact—Lawliet still had an impact on me, on all of us.

But then… Lawliet wasn't, isn't, like Near.

And of course, there's Mello to consider. If Near inherited Lawliet's quirkiness and analytical mind, Mello inherited his tendency toward deep emotion. But with Lawliet, it had always been a sort of sorrow, a forlornness. Mello was angry, always angry, incessantly angry, angry, ANGRY…

Mello isn't like Lawliet, either. But that's okay. We knew that.

But they say that Near is like Lawliet.

They're wrong.

Near… Near is not like Lawliet.

They are different because…

I loved Lawliet, and now he's gone.

Near was never there at all.